Dealing with large casts

[graychalk]

Hiya everyone! I'm still fairly new to this community, but I've really been enjoying how helpful and encouraging everyone is here. I thought I should come out of lurkdom a bit and say hello. :)

I'd also like to bring up a topic that I hope could get some kind of discussion going, because I've been batting this stuff in my brain for months and I keep going back and forth on the best way to approach this. So... without further rambling, how do you guys deal with writing large casts - especially ones where there are quite a few key characters that would be important enough to warrant their point of views too?

Do you tend to prefer switching between POVs by a break of some sort, or do you brave the omniscient POV and hope it doesn't turn into a mess of head-hopping? And if you do dedicated switches between POVs, when do you make your switches? Within the same scene or do you make it a point to only do it when it's a new scene? Or something else entirely?

I would really love any input on this - it's driving me a bit nuts because I can't seem to find an approach that fits for my fic. :(

Thanks all!

Comments

[rebecca2525]

I find there are two ways to do second person: you-the-reader (Choose-your-own-adventure style, or as in If on a Winter's Night a Traveller), and you-the-character (the scifi novel Molly Zero does this, for example.) But somehow people always talk about you-the-reader POV, so maybe I'm just weird making this distinction? I don't mind the latter at all, as I don't feel like I'm the addressee of the you.

[dhae_knight_1]

I dunno. Maybe my brain is weird, because it always interprets 'you' as being adressed at me, the reader. Whereas 'I', oddly enough, never engenders the same response.

Hmm... I'm sure there's some really interesting psycho-linguistic study in that, somewhere... ;-)

[rebecca2525]

I guess it's similar to reading a letter that isn't addressed to me or overhearing a person talking to someone else--in both cases "you" isn't me?

But I've heard lots of people saying they don't like second person POV because they don't like being told what to do, when I feel most of those stories aren't addressing me, so I guess people read second person differently.

[amaresu]

That's interesting because I've never felt that distinction. It's always been you-the-character to me. Can you perhaps elaborate on what makes the difference? I've never read If on a Winter's Night a Traveller (although I've been meaning to) so I don't know what specifically makes that different.

This idea fascinates me.

[rebecca2525]

I guess it's about breaking the fourth wall? It's not very common. Winter's Night explicitly addresses the reader. I don't have my copy with me, but the style goes somewhat like this: You are about to read If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You have read Calvino's last book, and you liked it, or at least you found it intriguing enough to pick up Winter's Night when you saw it at the bookstore. You settle down into your armchair. Take your time to find a comfortable position. Make sure you have a bottle of water within reach so that you don't have to get up again halfway into the first chapter. Or maybe you prefer to drink tea? Put the kettle on and choose a fine brand of tea [...] Now, dear reader, are you ready to delve into the first chapter?

Then there are first person narratives where the reader gets addressed occasionally, something along I hope you, dear reader, will understand the predicament I found myself in!

As I said, I don't think those are very common (outside of choose-your-own-adventure books and computer games). I'm just always a bit confused when people say they don't like second person POV because they feel like being ordered around, when personally I feel like most second person stories don't address the reader with their "you". But people seem to perceive this differently, I guess.

[amaresu]

That's interesting. I think I need to move this book up my To Read list.